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What’s the cause of all this Premier League managerial upheaval?

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Equally, the style in which McCarthy and James McArthur have flourished into authentically high-end Premier League players is of huge credit to their boss.  The maturity which McCarthy brings to the field every week, and which was so evident in his decision making during the Wembley final, both belies his 22 years and is testament to Martinez’s work.  If the young Irishman is to leave the DW Stadium this summer, Wigan can expect to receive hefty financial recompense.

For all there is to champions in favour of Martinez’s skills, his complete package doesn’t yet stand up to the most exacting scrutiny.  In the course of losing twenty of their 37 league matches this term, his team has conceded 71 goals.  Wigan’s deficiencies in that department against Swansea and Arsenal were plain for all observers to see.  The crazy goals gifted to among others; Itay Schechter, Dwight Tiendalli, and Lukas Podolski (twice) were indicative of a unit whose good work is routinely undone by defensive neglect.

Poor defending was responsible for all seven occasions on which the Latics’ defence was breached during their past two league matches.  A disastrous mixture of inadequate organisation, absence of cohesion, and a sea of scrambled minds do not form to produce a solid rear-guard.  Due to the decisive nature of those last two league fixtures, the failings of Martinez’s side were thrust firmly into the spotlight.  It is the repetition of similar errors over nine months however, that has seen Wigan drop from the top-flight at a time when they possess a group of players capable of far more.

The examples of Latics’ profligacy are writ large across the entire campaign.  Within seven minutes of the season starting, Martinez’s team were trailing Chelsea by two goals as a direct result of two defensive howlers.  Manchester United twice scored four goals against Wigan, and two league encounters against Liverpool ended with an aggregate score-line of 7-0.  Sunderland scored three times at the DW Stadium, and the division’s hitherto second lowest scorers, Stoke City, have plundered four of their 33 goals at Wigan’s expense.

Martinez has pleaded an unprecedented spate of defensive injuries in mitigation for his side’s strife.  While the absence at various stages of men like, Ivan Ramis, Antolin Alcaraz, Jean Beausejour, and Maynor Figueroa has undoubtedly proven costly, there is no excuse for the lack of even the most basic defensive shape and responsibility that has blighted Wigan’s campaign.

The Latics’ problems defending their own goal under Martinez are not consigned to this fateful season.  The goals against column on conclusion of his first term at the Wigan helm- following close to two-and-half years managing Swansea – read 79.  In the ensuing two years Wigan conceded 61 and 62 goals respectively, an improvement, but nevertheless an alarming yield.

Sill in the infancy of his coaching life, and with a definite and admirable philosophy concerning how he expects football to be played, Roberto Martinez possesses a number of the qualities required to enjoy a lasting and bountiful managerial career.  For that scenario to hold true, the ambitious Iberian has some way to go in his professional development.  Judged on all available evidence he will travel that path well, yet it is a peculiar world in which headlines declare that Martinez will ‘let Wigan know of (his) plans’ after their final game.

It is the same rare planet on which Gus Poyet, just minutes after watching his Brighton & Hove Albion team beaten on their own ground by their fiercest rivals, in their most important match of the season, – a Championship Play-off semi-final against Crystal Palace – publicly cast doubt over his own future.

The Uruguayan, who was given his first shot at working as a Number 1 by the Sussex club, said;

‘I will analyse where we can go and myself as well and then sit down with the club.

‘I have always said that all the time we keep improving I am going to be at this football club and the day we hit the roof, I’m not.

‘I have got to think about myself as well sometimes.

‘Every summer you sit down and analyse where you can go, where you can get or not and depending on that you have got a project or a way of getting better’.

A contract tying him to the Amex Stadium until 2016 wasn’t enough to prevent Poyet from speaking out.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at the climax of a campaign which has been marked for its complete lack of any rhyme or reason.  Managers have been hired and fired on a whim, trophies have been won against a backdrop of turmoil or relegation, and a League Two club – Bradford City – has reached a major final.  It is in that disordered climate that coaches not only in England, but the world over, are progressively working with more than one eye on their own uncertain futures.

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